WILL YOU RECALIBRATE THE CENTRE OF YOUR UNIVERSE, PLEASE?
Acolleague recently asked me “What’s your handicap?” I’m an able-bodied individual (if you ignore the minor quirk of being able to wrap my left arm around my back and touch my right armpit). Therefore, my response was: “None. Zero.” He looked at me like I’d just told him
I’m having an affair with Michelle Obama. “Seriously, dude?” he asked. “There’s no way you’re a scratch golfer.”
Only then did it occur to me that we were talking about golf. I told him I don’t have a golf handicap, mostly because I’ve never played a round of golf in my life. “How do you know whether you’d enjoy it or not if you’ve never tried it?” he bleated. This is when I explained that Mrs N and I had never tried pegging either even though I have no idea if I’d enjoy it or not. He’s been giving me a wider berth than usual since then.
I pondered the source of my defensive belligerence about such an innocuous question. It finally occurred to me that I’m annoyed by people who position whatever they deem important at the centre of my universe. Why would anyone ask me about handicaps without asking me if I’m interested in golf at all? Why would anyone just assume that I know anything about handicaps?
We all do this, don’t we? We just assume that what we care about is obvious to everyone. A high-school
friend, Vezinhlanhla, recently posted something about AGT and BGT on Facebook. After racking my brain for half a day trying to figure out what those acronyms meant, the best I could come up with was
“After getting tazed” and “Before getting tazed”. I finally asked him what they stand for and discovered he was talking about the TV programmes America’s Got Talent and Britain’s Got Talent.
This phenomenon lies at the very core of our collective existence. Take the so-called map of the world. That whole north, east, west, south thingie is just a croc, innit? Who said north was up and south down? Isn’t the friggin’ planet oval? If I gave you a soccer ball and asked which side was “up”, you’d probably blast me in the face and walk away without waiting for VAR.
So spare a thought for poor Mongolians, Cambodians and Taiwanese, who must live out their lives in the Far East. East of what? I mean, if you travel “eastward” from North Korea, won’t you end up on the so-called West Coast of the United States? And it’s apparently not cruel enough that they are east. They are also far. Far from where?
And spare a thought for us here in New Dawn Land, too. Unless you invert the map, we’re apparently at the butt crack of the entire world, which is why everyone is always “flying down” to SA. I almost threw
NDUMISO NGCOBO
Who said that north was up and south down? Isn’t the friggin’ planet oval?
a soft-boiled egg at the TV during a recent cricket World Cup broadcast because an annoying Pommie kept referring to SA as “down there”. Screw you, turtle neck! You are down there on my map!
But we’re just as guilty of this among ourselves. Everybody is always going “down” to Port Elizabeth. Fair enough — given the pace of life in that gorgeous sleepy hollow, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the sediment of the river of life. This is why I was so amused when a friend from Summerstrand told me he was flying “down” to Joburg. I still corrected him, but I was wrong.
There are many manifestations of this. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard, “Oh dear, sorry, but I can’t pronounce your name. Is it Nomnomeesaw? (Followed by a pathetic, condescending grin). Ag, just give me your Christian name.” For starters, not being able to pronounce a ubiquitous name like mine after living here all of your 50 years of existence does make you a tad thick, doesn’t it? But also, who told you I was Christian?
Some months ago a cousin of mine asked me where my branch is. My bank did way with branches some years ago, so I was confused. It turns out she wanted to know my ANC branch. I was intrigued because I’ve never joined the ANC. But being an ANC member is “standard”, it would appear.
My favourite illustration of this point comes from easily the most entertaining politician I have ever encountered, one Dr Lionel Mtshali. During a debate on whether the KwaZulu-Natal legislature should be in Pietermaritzburg or Ulundi, with ANC provincial MPs arguing that Ulundi was too far, he famously asked, with honest confusion, “Hawu, nithi kukude oNdini nje, kanti nisukaphi nina? (You keep saying Ulundi is far. From where?)” ● LS
COLUMNIST